Ambassadors for Christ

Please turn in your bibles to the book of 2nd Corinthians chapter 5, starting in verse 16.

2 Corinthians 5:16–21 (ESV): From now on, therefore, we regard no one according to the flesh. Even though we once regarded Christ according to the flesh, we regard him thus no longer. 17 Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come. 18 All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation; 19 that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation. 20 Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us. We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. 21 For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

Please pray with me.

These six verses are so densely packed with ideas that should not be. This text boldly describes concepts that are impossible. If you study the character of God more closely, they become even more impossible. These verses are God’s word, so we know they have to be true. But how can they be true? That God reconciles sinners to himself alone strongly defies all earthly logic. On the face of it, this makes no sense. Yet this is the chief doctrine by which all other doctrines come from. It wouldn’t be an understatement to say, “your very life depends on how you think about this.”

The only way these verses make any sort of sense is by having a robust understanding of Christ and the gospel. And to have a robust understanding of Christ and the Gospel, we need to understand the seriousness of sin. And the only way to grapple with the seriousness of sin is to look at the attributes of God himself. It all starts with having a biblically informed view of the character of God. If our understanding of God is Ill informed, then sin doesn’t seem that bad, Christ doesn’t appear that glorious, and the gospel becomes just “Okay news that we’ve all heard before.” And if we ever find ourselves in that place as a church, it would be better if we tore this place down and went our separate ways. This is not a club, you aren’t listening to a TeD Talk, we don’t teach 7 tips and tricks to being a good person. This is a church of God most high- the stakes couldn’t be any higher, the eternal life or death of people’s souls. So we had better take care in how we think about and talk about our God. Everything stems from this understanding.

So we begin with the knowledge that God is Holy, he is perfect, God is a righteous judge. Mankind is sinful, and deserving of judgment. But this holy God reconciles sinners to himself. How can this be? He’s under no obligation to do this. No outside force compels him to reconcile sinners to himself. In fact a holy and perfect judge shouldn’t reconcile the guilty. Any modern day judge who lets the guilty go free and throws the innocent in jail we would recognize very quickly, that Judge is a horrible judge. God himself condemns this kind of judge in the strongest terms possible-

Proverbs 17:15 (ESV): He who justifies the wicked and he who condemns the righteous are both alike an abomination to the Lord.

If you’re going to be a good judge, your one job is to convict the guilty, and justify the innocent. And there’s no question on which side of the courtroom, all of mankind stands: the bible tells us that all of mankind is wicked and guilty and deserving of death. And that sounds so extreme to our ears, the death penalty for sin, even little sins?

And we think that way because we have this awful tendency of assigning thresholds to sin. We put sin on a spectrum.

We feel the spark of justice when an evil warlord commits genocide but later get overrun and killed We say, their crime far exceeded the threshold required for the extreme punishment of death. So yeah, justice was done there. I’m ok with this.

We are also very comfortable in keeping the threshold for sin on the high end for someone else, if their sin hurts us.

But then we slide that threshold over for ourselves when it comes to gossip, not living with your wife in an understanding way. Complaining. Creating division in the church. Or being anxious about the future. We don’t see those sins as crossing the threshold for deserving death. But God absolutely does! All sin, whether adultery or being anxious or idolatry, or stealing a pack of gum, all of it is offensive to God to the utmost extent, and this offense creates for you a debt that can only be paid for by death. This is the shocking seriousness of sin. And it’s uncomfortable, it’s extreme, but it doesn’t change the fact that it is the objective reality in which we live. You can say this doesn’t sound fair or just, but God’s word is the benchmark definition of those terms.

James 2:10 For whoever keeps the whole law but fails in one point has become guilty of all of it.

Romans 6:23 For the wages of sin is death.

As a side note, while it’s true, that God hates all sin, some sins have greater consequences here in this life, one notable example from

1 Peter 3:7 (ESV): Likewise, husbands, live with your wives in an understanding way, showing honor to the woman as the weaker vessel, since they are heirs with you of the grace of life, so that your prayers may not be hindered.

This should cause every husband to walk out of here in fear and trembling. God takes all sin seriously. But God takes the sin of you treating your wife poorly so seriously that he will, in some way I don’t understand, interrupt his relationship with you and refuse to hear your prayers until you show honor to your wife.

God’s reaction to sin is severe and absolute and completely just. Sin is breaking God’s law, he decides what constitutes as sin and what the just punishment should be for that sin. God’s courtroom is not like traffic court, where going 50 over the speed limit gets a harsher sentence than going 10 over. We have to rid ourselves of thinking God operates this way.

God’s threshold for sin is zero. It is either perfect adherence to his law or death. There exists no sliding threshold for sin. This is pass/fail, and what’s more, you don’t even get to take the test. You are born into failure.

Psalm 51:5 Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me.

This is the reality for all of humankind. Born, steeped in sin, incurring a debt so massive we couldn’t ever hope to pay for it, and scheduled to appear before a judge who by his very nature is so just, he cannot and will not pardon the guilty.

So when we read that God reconciles sinners to himself, and our first response is, “oh that’s nice.” Or, “I already knew that one.” Then, we’re in trouble. We’ve lost something. The fact That God reconciles sinners should produce a deep sense of awe and reverence and cause us to ask in wonder, “how can this be?”. Because on the face of it, it shouldn’t even be possible.

So costly was the debt of our sin, so great and terrible a price to be paid for it, so hopeless and pitiful and rebellious the people who incurred that debt, first, who could possibly pay it!? And second, Who would even want to?!

Listen to this exchange between God and his Son, inspired and adapted from the writing of John Flavel a puritan preacher from the 17th century. He writes:

Here you may suppose the Father to say when driving His bargain with Christ for you.

The Father speaks, “My Son, here is a company of poor miserable souls, that have utterly undone themselves and now lay open to my justice. Justice demands satisfaction for them, or will satisfy itself in the eternal ruin of them.”

The son responds, “oh my Father, Such is my love and pity for them, rather than they perish eternally, I will be responsible for what they owe. Bring in all their debts, that I might see what they owe, bring in all the bills, that there will be no after reckoning with them. From my own hands shall you require it. I would rather choose to suffer the wrath that is theirs than they should suffer it. Upon me, Father, upon me be all their debt.”

The Father responds, “but my son, if you undertake this for them, you must reckon to pay the last cent. Expect no abatement, hope for no mercy for you will have none. Son, if I spare them, I will not spare you.”

The Son replies, “Let it be so. Charge it all upon me. I am able to pay this debt in full. And even though it proves a kind of undoing to me, even though it would impoverish all my riches, even though it would empty the storehouses of all my treasures, I am content to do this. I will pay it in full. For I love this people, and I have chosen them to be mine.”

Christ, they only one who could possibly pay the massive debt of our sin, also choose to pay it, out of love for you.

A few weeks ago, the first images from the James Webb Telescope were downloaded to earth. This picture of the heavens, which represents the area blocked by a grain of sand held at arms length, contains thousands of galaxies. Potentially billions of planets. And as people across the world struggled to come to terms with the sheer scale of the universe, I couldn’t help but think, it cost the life of the creator of that to pay my debt of sin. If he can create that behind a grain of sand, what do the storehouses of all his riches look like? Because that’s what it took to redeem his people.

God reconciles sinners to himself, and he does it through Christ, but how is this done in a way that God remains consistent with his own character as a righteous judge? Verse 21 of our text explains the mechanics-

For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

Many theologians have strong warnings for any preacher who expounds this verse. Don’t say too much, they caution. For you can find yourself approaching blasphemy. But don’t say too little, lest you would rob God’s people from seeing his glory.

God cannot sin. He is holy, he is perfect, and he is just. When verse 21 says, “for our sake he(God) made him (Christ) to be sin.” It does not mean that God, in some way, caused Jesus to commit sin. Nor does it mean that at any point in his life Jesus had committed a sinful act. Some have taken this verse to indicate a sort of divine child abuse that God would order his son to sin so he could pour out his anger on him. That, is blasphemy. And it boils my blood, because this verse is everything to me! This verse in all of its horror is the only thing that stands between me and hell.

What this verse means is that Christ out of love for you and me struck an arrangement with his Father to take the forensic evidence of all of our sin, all of the muck, all of the filth and smear it all over himself until he was unrecognizable. Layer after layer of my rancid rebellion and defiance coated this man until his own Father had to look away. In this way, he became sin, because when God the Father looked at him on the cross, that’s what he saw. Christ took the evidence of our sins upon himself in such a personal and absolute way, that it looked as if he had committed all of them. And he did this to intentionally attract God’s focused wrath away from us, and on to himself. With no common grace to shield him, every ounce of God’s judgement meant for us, now found it’s target on Christ. Where a single drop of God’s wrath would make us melt like wax before a blast furnace, He drank the full measure of it, consumed it completely and endured!

At the same time Christ drew out my sin and put it on himself he also takes his life, clean from all sin and drapes it over my shoulders like a robe. And now both of us are unrecognizable from what we once were. Christ became sin, and the Christian becomes righteous.

Look, No one watching in all the hosts of heaven were under any illusions as to what was going on here. It was perfectly clear who had really lived the perfect life and who was really responsible for the debt of sin. There was no confusion about the reality of what was happening. The perfectly innocent man was made to look like the wicked, and the wicked were made to look like the perfectly innocent man. And the righteous judge justly poured out his judgement.

There was only ever one hope. A champion was needed who was perfect. No one perfect could be found. A strong man of God with shoulders broad enough to withstand the avalanche of God’s terrible wrath was required. No one could withstand God’s wrath and endure. We needed someone who obeyed God’s law to the letter with all of his heart, soul, mind, and strength. One who could endure temptation and never buckle under its weight. If you took all of mankind who have lived in the past, present and future, and added their sum total together, you couldn’t find a fraction of what we needed! Not even close! So When I tell you without Jesus Christ it was hopeless, that word doesn’t scratch the surface of describing our situation.

Our only hope was that God would intervene in an impossible way. And that way was and still is The man, Jesus Christ, the Son of God, who formed our rescue before we even knew we needed rescue.

You better believe, this was all done for God’s own glory, but church, don’t you ever forget that it was all motivated by his love for you that is so immense, it will take all of eternity to plumb the depths of it. 10,000 years, and we’ll just be getting started.

Jesus, The one who knew no sin, became sin for a people where that’s all they knew. In Christ God’s justice was satisfied, and we a hopeless people reconciled! Free. Impossibly Free! This is the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. Look at this glory! Don’t stop looking at it. When your love grows cold, when heart is hardened, let this break you. And then allow the spirit of god to put you back together because there’s much gospel work to be done….

2nd Corinthians 5 verse 15 leading up to our text

2 Corinthians 5:15 (ESV):

and he died for all, that those who live might no longer live for themselves but for him who for their sake died and was raised.

First part of Verse 16:

From now on, therefore, we regard no one according to the flesh.

Paul is writing to what was arguably the worst church plant ever. The church in Corinth was outdoing the pagans at their own game. It would be like if we planted a church in Las Vegas, only to find out a year later that the residents of Sin City were impressed by the immorality of the Christians who were attending that new church. Corinth was well known throughout the Roman Empire for it’s debauchery and deep immorality. It was something that they celebrated and boasted about. Even they had limits. The Corinthian church seemed to not have very many. So if there was ever a group of people to regard or be known by their outward conduct, it would be this church. But Paul does the opposite and points this wayward church to the reality of their new life in Christ. He says we regard no one according to the flesh, meaning we have a new way of seeing each other: no longer do we only look at the external. We are aware of the extraordinary transformation that has taken place in the heart of a fellow believer, and we use that as the primary means to understand who they are. Paul line of thinking goes like this- if God, the most holy and perfect judge reconciles someone to himself, who could say otherwise? How can we look down on a fellow christian and judge them according to their outward conduct when God himself has made them righteous. What this does not mean, is that we turn a blind eye to each other’s sin. Elsewhere, Paul still calls the Corinthian church to pursue godliness and he calls them out where they are living in unrepentant sin, but he does so in a way that regards them as the blood bought church of Christ, redeemed from sin.

Paul goes on,

Even though we once regarded Christ according to the flesh, we regard him thus no longer.

Paul is saying, I was wrong before when I considered Jesus to be just a man. Heinrich Meyer writes in his New Testament commentary ,

Paul had known Christ, so long as the merely human individuality of Christ ,His lower, earthly appearance was the limit of his knowledge of Him. At the time when he himself was still a zealot against Christ, and His persecutor, he knew Him as a mere man, as a common Jew, not as Messiah, not as the Son of God; as one justly persecuted and crucified, not as the sinless Reconciler and the transfigured Lord of glory. It was quite different, however, since God had revealed His Son in Paul, whereby he had learned to know Christ according to His true, higher, spiritual nature.

Paul calls the Corinthian church and us, to know each other according to our new, true, and higher spiritual natures- which is: redeemed, Justified and Righteous in Christ.

The gospel applied is so utterly powerful and transforming that it creates a whole brand new person with a whole brand new identity. Verse 17

Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come

So thorough is this transformation, so profound the canyon between “outside of Christ” and “in Christ” it can only be described as death to life. When you accept the free offer of God’s grace , and your debt of sins is paid in full by Christ- in that moment there becomes an old you. And that identity dies and is gone. There is no after-reckoning with the “old you” because it passed away and you are now no longer that person.

In God’s eyes, it’s as if you were born all over again into a new life! And that new life looks remarkably similar to the perfect one that Jesus lived. Is our new life perfect right now? No. But it will be. We are being changed day by day by the Spirit of the living God to look more and more like Christ… but in order to even start that process, the old must pass away and we must be born again to a new life.

This is what Jesus was talking about with Nicodemus in John chapter 3,

Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God.

The old life cannot see the kingdom of God, the old life gets the here and now and that’s it. But Paul directs our attention, behold, look at this new life in Christ! As you walk out your lives as believers in the church make sure you interact with each other as those who have been made new!

Verse 18-20

All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation; that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation. Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us. We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God.

Paul tells us that this plan of reconciliation is all from God. God plans our rescue before the foundations of the world. God gives his Son to become our Ransom. God the Son gives his life for his people. God gives the son’s righteous life to that people. God gives his Spirit to empower those in Christ. It’s all from God! He does all of the work. But then in a surprising move that no one saw coming, God takes the entire ministry of this amazing divine reconciliation and gives it to us, the church. This glorious message of grace, mercy, peace and reconciliation, God says to us, “here take this, I trust you with it. I will make my appeal through you. You will be my Ambassadors to the world.”

We’re not bring anything to the table, so It’s like, are you sure?

I’m not up on the current requirements for becoming an Ambassador for a country- but I imagine pretty high up on the list is something like “don’t hire your sworn enemy. Don’t hire someone who hated you personally and hated everything about what you stand for. Don’t give the job that’s supposed to further the interests of your country to someone who killed the king’s son! But God does exactly that and makes us, the church, Ambassadors for Christ, and honestly we sure seem like an odd choice for this post. Just how good of an ambassador could we be?! In many ways, it seems like we would make the worst ambassadors.

But listen to this, God’s acceptance of Christ’s sacrifice on our behalf is so assured, and the righteous life Jesus gave to us is so beyond guaranteed- the new creation that the believer in Christ becomes, is not only well qualified for the job, we also now permanently possess Gods spirit within us to do the job. It is only Because of the power of Christ in us, the spirit of God working through us, that we are thoroughly equipped by God to be entrusted with this message of reconciliation.

God makes his appeal through us. You’ve heard it said before, that with one hand God is holding back his wrath giving time for people to hear this message of the gospel and with the other other hand he is reaching out making his appeal, through us, the church to implore, to beseech sinners to be reconciled to Him. God sends us out to be the voice of that appeal.

Romans 10:13–15 (ESV): For “everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.”

14 How then will they call on him in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching? 15 And how are they to preach unless they are sent? As it is written, “How beautiful are the feet of those who preach the good news!”

As a church we just finished our series in 1 Timothy: Life together, instructions for being the church. We’ve taken the blueprints of how a church should be built and we shored up our foundation with the word of God in how we should conduct ourselves. And I felt the Lord leading me to preach from this text from 2nd Corinthians with the application of 1st Timothy 5:1

Do not rebuke an older man but encourage him as you would a father, younger men as brothers, older women as mothers, younger women as sisters, in all purity.

I’m a younger guy, and There is no implied rebuke here whatsoever. This church excels in walking out 2nd Corinthians 5, this is an encouragement and call for boldness in going forth to preach the gospel as ambassadors for Christ.

Older men of Center Church, many of you have walked this out for decades so well. Your example inspires us young guys and we need your example and discipleship, but go further, be more bold in Christ, take more risks for the Gospel, lead us by your example of humility and dependence on Christ.

Young guys, brothers, seek out discipleship, cultivate humility, and work to continually be in awe of our God. Use this season to spend your energy becoming so filled with love and affection for the savior that the overflow spills out and inspires those around you. Grow your confidence in Christ, who gives you the strength to lift the shield of faith because the fiery darts of trial are coming. Lean on Christ and your brothers here that you might stand firm and proclaim the good news.

Older women, Gods term, not mine, many of you have faithfully studied God’s word longer than I’ve been a believer. You have wisdom from the Lord that this church needs, you have experience in Godly living that needs to be passed down to the next generation, you have a testimony of God’s amazing grace in your life that needs to be shared, be bold for Christ. Preach the gospel to those who are perishing by sharing what God has done for you.

Young women, sisters, be mighty women of Gods word. Study it, and know it and let it shine out of your life, so When the powers of this dark world press in, you may draw the sword of the spirit which is the word of God with a steady and practiced hand. Seek out and desire discipleship. Be so bold as ambassadors for Christ, and so assured of your Saviors love that when darkness comes, you stand your ground and proclaim the light of the gospel.

Every single one of us, If we profess to be a Christian, have been given this title of Ambassador. You are not going to become an ambassador one day, you are in this moment Ambassadors for Christ. We all have a role to play in this ministry of reconciliation. First we love and treat one another with the understanding that Christ shed blood for us. We remember that He choose to pay the debt of our sin out of love for us. We are now his, through and through. And he calls us to go and plead with sinners, “be reconciled to God. I don’t know why he rescued me. But he did! And he can rescue you.” All we have to cling to as we go out and boldly preach the good news, is Christ himself. And that, beloved church, is all that we need. Amen!